Dragon Quest Journey of The Cursed King

9.0
Excellent

Gameplay	9.0	"A hugely engrossing return to old-school RPG's"
Graphics	8.0
Sound	8.0
Value	9.5

By Lucy O'Brien

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Dragon Quest VIII, the latest in the series from the folks at Square/Enix, is possibly one of the most lovingly crafted RPGs I have played since Final Fantasy 7 on the PSone. This is because Dragon Quest VIII is totally old school. The traditional formula is right here – turn-based random battles, a silent hero, quaint ‘ye olde’ villages with crackling fires and side-quests galore. Add a horse-princess who needs to be turned back into her beautiful anime self into the mix, and you’ve got yourself over 70 hours of gameplay. Unlike the Final Fantasy series, which is constantly morphing and reinventing itself, Dragon Quest has stuck to its tried-and-true formula that plenty of gamers will recognize and warm to like a childhood teddy bear. As for those who have never played some of the older RPGs – folks, you’re in for a treat. Dragon Quest’s world is free-roaming and richly detailed, its enemies are brilliantly bizarre (ever fought a capsicum?) and its story involving.

You play as the hero on a quest to hunt down the jester Dhoulmagus, a cartoonish supervillian with supernatural abilities and a partiality for murder. You are joined by Yangus, a comic relief cockney; Jessica, a ‘sexy’ sorceress; and Angelo, a ‘charming’ knight - and so the story begins. Once you’re out in the world, you’ll realize that random battles are a huge part of this game, occurring on average every fifteen or so seconds. You must fight these battles in order to gain enough strength to beat the bosses. This can get tiresome; however the enemies are quirky and oddball enough to make it mostly worthwhile – battling against cheerful little blobs of slime has a strange appeal. The traditional battle system is very easy to master, but the battles themselves are no walk in the park, with some of the common enemies being harder and more time-consuming to beat than the bosses themselves. You’ve just got to fight and level up, fight and level up, and then do it all over again. Its repetitiveness is satisfying, like listening to a Red Hot Chilli Peppers album.

Graphically, the game is designed by well-known manga artist Akira Toriyama, who has created an in-your-face colour palette full of bright yellows, reds and greens. There are no shadows or moody atmospheres here; everything is there to be seen and discovered. The music is fittingly epic, rolling from Lord of the Rings-esque grandeur to tense horror movie fare in the various dungeons and mazes. The principal characters have British voice-overs, and they’ve all had a wee bop on the head with the cliché hammer (when was the last time you heard a British person use the word ‘Guv’?’) For me this added an extra element of charm.

So much is right with this game. Its cheery brightness is deceptive - it looks like a kids cartoon, but plays like a beast. Don’t let anyone mock you about playing a ‘baby game’ - let them try and defeat a metal-slime and see what happens. Dragon Quest is so unforgiving in its tradition, yet so accomplished because of this; it might inspire you to remember why you started playing video games in the first place.

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